Good on you Jacqui,

Thanks I'm feeling more confident. That's my plan. make a deposit as little as possible and chuck the rest in offset. End goal (good yield).

No there won't be any spare money from my overseas salary for the acquisition of a second investment. I will have to wait until I return home with a higher salary. That's why I was trying to strike a balance of growth and a good yield.  That being said after several comments on the forum I now believe that a strong yield will help me sleep at night.

Back to square one for me. Number crunching is easy but nows the time to find an appropriate suburb and property in under a month! or potentially utilize the knowledge and skill of a buyers agent! Any suburb ideas? I originally put an offer in at Rutherford. then I started looking in the Illawarra.

cheers and thanks for helping me see through the frustration.

K

Wow cheers "Yours in Finance" for such a detailed response and taking the time to do so.

I'm rather surprised that purchasing in Brisbane would not be good for long term growth and cash flow.  Any suggestions where I should target? thank you for your insight.

" i can think of hundred and one areas where you money could be leveraged more effectively." – Like where? Or should I potentially be asking to recommend someone to source a property for me if too far out of Sydney?

"There is nothing to stop you using a variety of cash flow generating techniques to build your portfolio and these could involved combining a buy and hold strategy with a Vendor finance or development model where one can be used to generate income to pay down the other." – A development model would suit me better at this stage. That's what I've been thinking I just didn't know the terminology! and well I'm just starting with the one for the time being.

I'm fairly certain that I'm on the right path with my lender. I shopped around and funnily enough ended back at my own bank with a better outcome. I've discussed with them my arrangements over the next few years and they indicated that I'm best to proceed asap. I'm now certain that I need to act now before leaving the country considering I will be moving to a developing country for my work. I'm fairly certain I won't be financed based on my earnings overseas.

No my lender does not offer a fixed rate with 100% offset account (but the credit union Australia does – my original choice – before i changed my mind). However, my lender offers a combination of a fixed and variable rate packages. This works out better for me as the fixed rate is lower than CUA (although that was a few months back I should recheck) and the variable is ok with a 100% offset.  I'm able to leverage a 0.9% discount off the variable rate when refinancing once the fixed term is up (2 years) through a combined package as opposed to just a fixed rate. I've done the calculations (using several property examples) and generally doing a 50:50 split with 100% offset on the variable rate overall works out better for me. I really like the idea of having an offset account for cash availability.

Once again thanks for your time. I'm very grateful for the feedback.

cheers

K

Thanks everyone